


Point of ignition

by JaqofSpades



Category: Glee
Genre: Community: wishlist_fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:58:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Everyone's heard of mutants, but nobody is actually one themselves.  And aren't they supposed to have useful powers?  Uncontrollable pyromania cannot count.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point of ignition

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I've failed miserably on one part of this prompt. Completely overlooked the part about Season 1 Tina, because I wanted her to be a little more grown up and assertive. So it's Season 4 Tina, circa the Thanksgiving episode, which I haven't seen, so excuse any glaring continuity errors.

***

She's in therapy. Again.

One of the things that sucks about being a psychologist's kid is the overly enthusiastic application of the talking cure. Toothache? Tell Mommy all about it, darling. First period? Oh, you're becoming a woman. How do you feel? Pile of charred ashes because she stared at her homework too long?

What? You did what?

Nothing to say on that one, apparently. Mother decides that if Freud, Jung and Lacan are silent on the issue, it must not have actually happened.

"Are you feeling anxious about your schoolwork, darling? Was it a particularly stressful dream?"

Tina stares at her mother in disbelief and throws her hands in the air.

"It. wasn't. a. dream. I showed you the ashes, Mom! My homework caught on fire, and I wasn't playing with matches, or a lighter, or any sort of open flame. It just went ...."

POUF! Tina stares numbly at the curtains blazing behind her mother's head, then leaps for the fire extinguisher next to the door. Note to self, she thinks as she directs the foam around her still-catatonic mother. Investigate fire extinguishers. Let's hope they make them in portable sizes.

*

Tina is trying to reason her way through the fires-don't-start-themselves issue when she walks smack into a broad chest. A very nice chest, she realises when her hands come up to push herself away from all that hard, firm muscle ...

"Other Asian?"

... attached to the world's most ignorant pig. 

"Puck. I thought we were rid of you?"

It's not even a joke, because thoughts of Puck bring thoughts of Mike, and those thoughts lead to the sort of burning behind her eyes that she doesn't think is wise right now. Tina has convinced herself that she is best off completely repressing all memory of last year, and last year's alumni. Trust Puckerman to screw up her neat little plan.

Plans, really, because even before she'd decided to erase last year, she had been putting a lot of effort into not thinking lustful thoughts about Puck. Quite apart from being totally disloyal to Mi .. her ex-boyfriend, she refused to be lumped in with all those other idiots who had made fools of themselves for a ride on the Puckerman train. Even Rachel, whom she respected, had been googly-eyed for Puck more than once. Tina just wasn't one for crowds.

A crowded elevator, perhaps, where she could brush up against him innocently, or a crowded dancefloor ... 

"What's that smell?" he says suddenly, and Tina's eyes widen as his flannel shirt begins to smoulder.

"No! No, no, no!" she pleads with herself as she beats her binder against his chest, and the rapidly widening ring of smoking fabric is suddenly no more than singed.

"You stopped it!" he marvels, looking down with wide eyes.

"Fucking awesome!" His delight only lasts a second, however, before he tilts his head and cocks an eyebrow in her direction. "How'd I catch on fire anyway?"

Why she chooses him, she doesn't know. Maybe because it's been haunting her for days. Maybe because she hasn't said it yet. Maybe because he asked.

"I'm a mutant," she mutters, then lifts dark brown eyes to hazel.

"I've been starting fires. Without meaning to, but ... they just happen."

"Like - my shirt?"

"I was ... annoyed with you. My mother's curtains. Some homework." She shrugs, realises how insane it sounds. Everyone's heard of mutants, but nobody is actually one themselves. And aren't they supposed to have useful powers? Uncontrollable pyromania cannot count. 

"So you set me on fire? Harsh." He doesn't seem to hold it against her, however, slinging his arm over her shoulders and guiding her back towards the exit of school.

It's not even two o'clock, and Tina doesn't cut as a rule, but .... she needs to talk to someone about this, and Puck hasn't run off screaming at the m-word. She feels as if she should make some sort of token protest, but it's not even going to register with Puck, so she'll save her breath for more important battles. 

Like finding the courage to say it again.

"Mutant. Mutant. Mutant, mutant, mutant," she mumbles as they cross the carpark together, only stopping when he raises his eyebrows in her direction.

"Yeah - I heard you."

"I wanted to make sure I heard me. That was the first time I've said it. My mother is still in denial."

"That blows. You don't have to tell anyone if you don't want to. You don't look like a freak - you know, anymore than you normally do. Glee freak."

She rolls her eyes - he's grinning like the cat that swallowed the freaking canary - and points to her dilapidated old car. "You planning on riding with me? You might want to be nice. Especially now that I have a whole new way to dispose of your body," she says in the even, uninflected tone she knows Mike and Puck call "scary Tina".

He blinks a little, and Tina is almost insulted by how quickly he decides she's joking. 

"You're the one that dresses like a Japanese schoolgirl. Still trying to decide whether the hotness fractor outweighs the freak factor - and you've gone and got freakier."

He smirks at her over the roof of the car as she unlocks it, and she distracts herself by pondering whether it's the devilish glint in those bedroom eyes that makes them so damn effective. She's not sure he's ever looked at her like that before and she refuses to give in to the girlish urge to ask what it might mean.

Puckerman being Puckerman, he'll tell her himself if he wants her to know.

"So, Chang the first tells me you're not together anymore. You broke up with him before he went away to State."

"Yes."

"Why didja do that? Dude's still into you."

"Santana's obviously still into Brittany, too, and they didn't work. Or Blaine and Kurt. Even Finn and Rachel! Long distance relationships are stupid," she says, and wonders when Noah Puckerman has ever been interested in anyone's relationships. 

"Yeah. I would'a told him the same but ... you know. Not good coming from me."

"You're his friend, Puck. It would have really helped! He wasn't very understanding," Tina frowns as she lets them both into the car, then swings around to watch him get into the passenger seat. "Why not from you?"

He raises a brow in her direction and shrugs, almost embarrassed. "Because you're hot. Because I'm a prick with girls. He would'a thought I was trying to make a move."

Tina starts the car, thinking she should be explaining how Mike would never think that, how Mike knows that Puck isn't the same guy he used to be. But she can't help suspecting Mike would have thought that, and been even clingier than usual. And she'd kind of like to know ...

"Would you have?"

She's pulling out onto the road when he answers, so she can only spare him the swiftest of glances from the corner of her eye. It doesn't matter - the curve of his mouth is so wicked, she gasps, and forgets to listen to what he's actually saying.

And then he's not talking anymore, mouth hanging open as they fly past the giant billboard guarding the way back into Lima. Sue Sylvester's giant likeness is wreathed in fire, her features rapidly disintegrating into shrivelled blackness.

Tina shrugs helplessly when Puck turns to her in sheer delight. Oh, to be evil, she sighs wistfully, watching the bitch collapse in her rear-vision mirror. Her eyes flick back to Puck then, and maybe she can blame adrenaline or pheromones or something, because if she can't be evil - she really, really wants to be at least a little bit bad.

 

* 

"Those trees over there."

Experimentation, she thinks, as her heart pounds. Not random destruction at all. (Okay, the cars were just for fun. But they're actually trying to figure something out, now.)

She focuses, and lets it build a little before she releases it on the line of scrubby poplars. A little drama, she thinks at the last possible minute, and is able to quench the broad swathe of fire to focus on one tree, then the next, and down the line in showy pops that decorate the descending dusk like Christmas lights. 

"Fan-fucking-tabulous!" Puck hollers, eyes glittering with awe and admiration, and what she suspects is a fair dose of lust.

"Yeah, baby!" she smirks, and accepts a high five. She can afford to indulge in the odd teen cliche now. It's not like she's ever going to be ordinary.

Puck, it turns out, knows all the best places to blow stuff up. He knew exactly how to get into the county landfill (Armitage Road, hole in the back fence) and the fact that no one could see them out there. Or hear them.

"I like to watch things burn," he shrugs, and they burst out laughing because, strangely, she can relate.

She doesn't even notice the smell anymore, she's so high on heat and noise and the bliss of release. She thinks, and it happens. She doesn't need anger or frustration - just to gather the feeling, and direct it, and pouf. Up it goes. Puck really likes the big bangs, and yes, she had been trying to wow him a little, but she'd learnt something else, too. She had wondered about the paper floating on the updrafts, and suddenly, ash was raining on them. Scale back the intensity, she realises, and there's no noise, no visible flame, just quiet, gentle destruction. 

Probably more her style, Tina thinks. Covert. Very useful. And that line of thought scares her a little, so she abandons it to bring herself back to the moment. Back to being a girl, alone with a guy, dancing closer and closer to the point of ignition.

Recklessness is coursing through her blood, and every fire, every explosion, winds her a little tighter. Adrenaline, she guesses, but it's such a dry word for what it does to you. Heart pounding. Breathing jagged. It's not love, nothing like it, but she feels molten. Ready to explode. And she's pretty sure Puck knows it.

He's standing behind her, ostensibly to help, directing her like he would a game of First Person Shooter. (She wants to ask what he's using as a joystick, but she's not silly enough to give Puck that kind of opening.) He nudges her with his hip to get her attention, and cups her chin in his hand to point her towards the next target. And stays there, glued to her back, breath ragged in her ear, arms heavy on her shoulders. 

Boom, and the entire western sky is ablaze, and she slumps against him, the release rushing through her, intense and draining.

"Fuck, yeah," he groans, eyes on her face. This is the Puck no one can say no to, she thinks as she tips her head back to kiss him. The one who looks at you as if he's starving, and you're holding his next meal.

As if he's the spark and you're the flame.

She opens her mouth and his tongue plunges inside, sweeping every surface then coming back to her own to stroke and taste and God, he owns you when he does this, no wonder ...

He spins her around and walks her backward until she's pressed up against the hood of her car, sliding up even as he steps between her knees, hands already moving up and down her sides as if he can make her shirt disappear.

If Puck had a secret power, that would be it, she thinks. Instant clothes removal, and he's already mastered it. She can't accuse him of seduction, not really, because she kissed him first, and all she's thinking is what took her so long. Because she hasn't had nearly enough time with those lips, and really, she is going to need more. They're burning their way down the side of her neck, nibbling at her collarbone and moving into the neckline of her shirt, which she could swear was mostly buttoned up ten minutes ago.

One, two, three buttons and her bra is kind of a technicality, she discovers, because he just latches onto her nipple right through the silk, and fuck, she needs, she needs ...

"Damn, Tina, you're a fucking inferno!" he pants, and she stills. Inferno, she thinks.

I am an inferno. I am Inferno.

She's done her research. There's a school in New York State, where all you need for a full scholarship is to be able to demonstrate a very specific type of gift. She's not sure if they have a Glee club, but when the electives include everything from personal combat to the history of art, she figures she can always start one.

She's bigger than Lima now, and she owes it to herself to leave.

First things first, though. She hooks her ankles behind Puck's butt and stretches back on the bonnet of the car, arms overhead.

"Burn, baby, burn," she murmurs, and crooks her finger, inviting him down.

fin

Disclaimer: This fanfiction was written for personal enjoyment rather than profit. No infringement on the rights of the intellectual property owners is intended.


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